5 ms·

Mac OS has jumped from Classic (in the 2000 time frame) to X, which is a quantum leap. I don't think Windows has made any such leaps since 1995. Mild improveme

by cpr 17y ago

Mac OS has jumped from Classic (in the 2000 time frame) to X, which is a quantum leap. I don't think Windows has made any such leaps since 1995. Mild improvements, but also a lot of backsliding (Vista).

ajross 17y ago
That's an aliasing bug in the data, though. The 2001 date was cherry picked to show the release of OS X, but not the switch from the Win9x codebase to XP. You could play a similar game with the summer of 1995, where windows was "innovating" rapidly with the sudden switch to a 32 bit operating system while Apple was mired in tiny feature additions to system 8/9. The truth is that neither the XP/Vista/7 codebase nor OS X have changed much over the last decade. Desktop computing is pretty much a solved problem. Incremental improvement is all we're going to see from here on.
- varaon 17y ago
  > Desktop computing is pretty much a solved problem. Incremental improvement is all we're going to see from here on. I agree that we're just going to see incremental improvement with the current UI paradigms. Maybe this is just a sci-fi reverie, but I'd hope that at a certain point, we see a new generation of desktop UIs. (Centered around what, I don't know. Maybe 3D layout + 3D gesture recognition. Pan, tilt, zoom.)
lssndrdn 17y ago
There is a vast difference between Windows 95 and Windows 7.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  I am not sure how vast it is the difference between NT4 and Windows 7 though
  - blub 17y ago
    Having some knowledge of the internals would help you.
    - rbanffy 17y ago
      Are they that different?
sid0 17y ago
> I don't think Windows has made any such leaps since 1995. Mild improvements, but also a lot of backsliding (Vista). You'd be 100% wrong then. There have been two huge leaps, from the 9x codebase to the vastly more stable and secure NT codebase, and a further one from XP to Vista. Vista isn't "backsliding" by any stretch of the imagination -- its focus on security is the reason Windows today is so much more secure than OS X. Of course, there have been plenty of other improvements along the road, from global search to a compositing UI.
- ytinas 17y ago
  "Windows today is so much more secure than OS X" That's a pretty bold statement. The security model might be theoretically better but since most applications force you to run as administrator anyway I don't think it's currently buying you that much.
  - sid0 17y ago
    > The security model might be theoretically better but since most applications force you to run as administrator anyway I don't think it's currently buying you that much. 1. The security model isn't just theoretically better -- OS X still doesn't randomize heap and stack addresses properly, for example. As Dion Blazakis points out in http://www.semantiscope.com/research/BHDC2010/BHDC-2010-Slides-v2.pdf http://www.semantiscope.com/research/BHDC2010/BHDC-2010-Slid... slide 30, NX + ASLR makes "[h]ackers everywhere shed a tear." 2. Most Windows applications do not force you to run as administrator. Vista provided the push necessary for most applications to not require admin privs (source: http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/10/08/user-account-control.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/10/08/user-account-con... -- the "Impact on Software Ecosystem" section). 3. Frankly, an ordinary consumer should be a lot more concerned about his data than about the computer itself -- whether a program runs with admin privileges or not is mostly irrelevant in this case.
- gnurant 17y ago
  Nonsense. Perhaps the codebase is more stable. But why would a friend of mine still run windovs 98? He has no compulsion to change. You have to think end user.
rbanffy 17y ago
It would be fair to say MacOS was dumped and NeXTSTEP was renamed OSX after getting a glossy treatment. But yes. NeXTSTEP was very impressive since day 1 and OSX has come a long way since it was first introduced.

by cpr 17y ago

ajross 17y ago

That's an aliasing bug in the data, though. The 2001 date was cherry picked to show the release of OS X, but not the switch from the Win9x codebase to XP. You could play a similar game with the summer of 1995, where windows was "innovating" rapidly with the sudden switch to a 32 bit operating system while Apple was mired in tiny feature additions to system 8/9. The truth is that neither the XP/Vista/7 codebase nor OS X have changed much over the last decade. Desktop computing is pretty much a solved problem. Incremental improvement is all we're going to see from here on.

varaon 17y ago
> Desktop computing is pretty much a solved problem. Incremental improvement is all we're going to see from here on. I agree that we're just going to see incremental improvement with the current UI paradigms. Maybe this is just a sci-fi reverie, but I'd hope that at a certain point, we see a new generation of desktop UIs. (Centered around what, I don't know. Maybe 3D layout + 3D gesture recognition. Pan, tilt, zoom.)

lssndrdn 17y ago

There is a vast difference between Windows 95 and Windows 7.

rbanffy 17y ago
I am not sure how vast it is the difference between NT4 and Windows 7 though
- blub 17y ago
  Having some knowledge of the internals would help you.
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    Are they that different?

sid0 17y ago

> I don't think Windows has made any such leaps since 1995. Mild improvements, but also a lot of backsliding (Vista). You'd be 100% wrong then. There have been two huge leaps, from the 9x codebase to the vastly more stable and secure NT codebase, and a further one from XP to Vista. Vista isn't "backsliding" by any stretch of the imagination -- its focus on security is the reason Windows today is so much more secure than OS X. Of course, there have been plenty of other improvements along the road, from global search to a compositing UI.

ytinas 17y ago
"Windows today is so much more secure than OS X" That's a pretty bold statement. The security model might be theoretically better but since most applications force you to run as administrator anyway I don't think it's currently buying you that much.
- sid0 17y ago
  > The security model might be theoretically better but since most applications force you to run as administrator anyway I don't think it's currently buying you that much. 1. The security model isn't just theoretically better -- OS X still doesn't randomize heap and stack addresses properly, for example. As Dion Blazakis points out in http://www.semantiscope.com/research/BHDC2010/BHDC-2010-Slides-v2.pdf http://www.semantiscope.com/research/BHDC2010/BHDC-2010-Slid... slide 30, NX + ASLR makes "[h]ackers everywhere shed a tear." 2. Most Windows applications do not force you to run as administrator. Vista provided the push necessary for most applications to not require admin privs (source: http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/10/08/user-account-control.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/10/08/user-account-con... -- the "Impact on Software Ecosystem" section). 3. Frankly, an ordinary consumer should be a lot more concerned about his data than about the computer itself -- whether a program runs with admin privileges or not is mostly irrelevant in this case.
gnurant 17y ago
Nonsense. Perhaps the codebase is more stable. But why would a friend of mine still run windovs 98? He has no compulsion to change. You have to think end user.

rbanffy 17y ago

It would be fair to say MacOS was dumped and NeXTSTEP was renamed OSX after getting a glossy treatment. But yes. NeXTSTEP was very impressive since day 1 and OSX has come a long way since it was first introduced.